The Buddha taught that the union of wisdom and compassion can lead us to total happiness and freedom from the repeated cycle of birth, miseries and death in samsaric existence. Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, the wings of wisdom and of compassion (specifically bodhicitta, the wish to achieve full awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings) are both required in order to achieve Buddhahood. With wisdom, we come to understand how our distorted perception of reality keeps us bound in uncontrolled cyclic rebirth. Developing loving-kindness and compassion help us to achieve success and happiness, through eliminating our attitude of self-centeredness.
The Wheel Weapon text, composed in the 9th or 10th century and attributed to the Indian master Dharmarakshita, one of the primary teachers of Lama Atisha, focuses on what is referred to as the “method side” of the teachings. It is a lojong (mind training) text, which employs powerful and pointed metaphors, such as the peacock, reputed to thrive on a diet of poisonous plants, to illustrate the benefits of training oneself to mentally take on the misery of ourselves and others. With this type of training, even negative emotions can be put to service to counter egotism. Mind training helps to stabilize emotions, combats self-centeredness, and helps to gain the maximum benefit from our short human lives.
Though this text was written centuries ago, its message is still very relevant: all our misfortunes originate from not understanding that true happiness comes from giving up the self-cherishing mind. Practicing these radically profound mind training methods can increase our mental strength, courage, and willpower, and help us to understand experientially that true happiness grows when we care for others as much as we care for ourselves.
We hope you will join us in exploring this provocative text, led by our skilled and compassionate resident teacher Geshe Tenley.
The text we will be using is Poison in the Peacock Grove published by Wisdom Publications.
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